


Rescue Me

by tokillthatmockingbird



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, and some references to canon, i don't remember what happened with mrs. lahey, just pure sadness, so i'm clearly going to kill her off in every possible way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:47:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokillthatmockingbird/pseuds/tokillthatmockingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inside his 5x2x2 ceramic prison, Isaac Lahey spent his punishment alternating between crippling panic and deep thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue Me

**Author's Note:**

> As everyone can tell, I have an Isaac Lahey obsession. I apologize.

 

Inside his 5x2x2 ceramic prison, Isaac Lahey spent his punishment alternating between crippling panic and deep thought.

    He would scratch at the top until his felt his fingers bled, scream until his vocal chords were raw and throbbing. He would suck in as much air as he thought his lungs could handle, and then he would allow himself, in the Stygian darkness, to slip into a quiet state of meditation.

    His anxiety interrupted his memories. His pounding heart halted the easy flow of his thoughts, usually enough to bring him back to reality and back to the darkness. Still, there were brief moments that felt like peaceful eternities, when he finally lapsed into a gross limbo between desperation brought on by thick freezer walls and tranquility that came when he realized that there was a heavy chain and inches of insulated strength between himself and the swinging fists of his father.

    The latter could only be a band-aid comfort for so long, until all the air was muggy and hot, and he could feel the snugness of the walls pressing in on his sides. He was too large to contort to something fetal, something small that made him feel safe and protected. Each movement of his body was self-inflicted bruises, bone and muscle banged against hard ceramic.

    He was allowed very little time to think between his terrifying reality, but when he could, he usually thought of his mother.

    She had a thick head of auburn curls; she’d tickle them across Isaac’s nose as he wiggled at the bristling. He could still hear her peals of laughter, remember the feel of her warm hands cupping his face. He could still smell the hint of her vanilla hand lotion, see that crookedness of her gentle smile.

    He remembered the times he would climb into her lap, and she would dramatically clear her throat, put on a deep voice that he could still recognize as hers, and set up the scene of a twisted fairytale, where sometimes the frogs kissed princesses and turned them into toads, where princes were the bad guys and all the dragons wanted to do was go see their grandmothers in Beacon Hills.

    And then her auburn curls came out on her pillows, and her warm hands became cold and clammy. She started smelling like bile and sterility. He only heard her laugh in hollow snippets of their once booming glory. One day, she was too tired to make up any stories, so she recycled the old ones: Cinderella and Snow White and Rapunzel toured Isaac’s bedroom and his dreams, and he heard a whispered “discussion” (that’s what Mom always called the heated conversations between she and Dad) about how she’d just turn their son gay by telling him all those princess stories.

    One day, she got too tired to fight David about such inane things, and she handed Isaac a Power Rangers book and kissed his head, promising that he’d like this kind of story time as much as Camden did.

    It was the first time that Isaac ever caught her lying to him. The second time was the night she died, when she had promised him that she would be there for his eighth birthday party and then passed away in her sleep.

    The story of Rapunzel stuck with him long after his mother’s death. There was something magically reassuring about a woman being alone in a tower without a grumpy dad to bother her, whose curls never fell out, who was so strong that she let a man climb up her hair and didn’t even cry. He bet Rapunzel never broke any promises to anyone, probably because she had no one to make any promises to. This made him both immensely jealous and immensely sad.

    Then, as his own story began to change, his interest in Rapunzel changed. It became less about how she was everything his poor mother couldn’t be and more about what Isaac himself wished he could be.

    A tower, high up in the air, alone and quiet and big enough to move in— it sounded much more appealing to him than a dingy old freezer ever could be.

    “At least talk about the _princes_ more,” David had complained to his wife that night outside Isaac’s bedroom. “Don’t let him sit there thinking he needs someone to rescue him; he’s got to learn to help himself.”

    Needing to be rescued was not about boys versus girls or princes versus princesses. It was about about reaching out for help when you couldn’t fight it alone anymore. It was about crying into your brother’s shoulder when the cancer took Mom too soon; it was about running to your neighbors when your father gave you that black eye for dropping your dinner on the floor. Needing to be rescued was about protection when fighting for yourself was a tired option. There were only so many times that you could fight before you were too exhausted, too beaten, too scared to do it by yourself anymore.

    Isaac Lahey needed to be rescued, and he wasn’t ashamed of that at all.

    Rapunzel waited sixteen years, his mother had said, for someone to help her out of that tower— which was stupid, considering she could have just tied her hair around her balcony and climbed down herself the whole time. But sometimes, it wasn’t even about the resources you had. It was about knowing that there would be someone there who could celebrate in your emancipation when it was all over, knowing that there was someone who thought you were worth rescuing.

    When Scott McCall, growling and snarling and feral, still with a look of concern etched across his features, called out Isaac’s name, he knew that he had been rescued.


End file.
